Bugweed Warriors

 I moved to George in November 2020 and moved into a rental house in mid-December. When my friend Tracey saw my garden, she immediately noticed the big bugweed tree and educated me about this invasive alien. Tracey and Cliffy helped me to cut it down, treating the stump with suitable poison to kill it. 

Suitably educated, my eyes learned to spot bugweed everywhere: in the forests, along trails, and coming up along firebreaks. I began pulling out seedlings along the trails. Over time, I saw clearly how mu consistent actions made a huge difference. On trails that I regularly used, no bugweed. On trails that I infrequently used or new trails, bugweed is everywhere.

Around mid-last year, in a random conversation with friend Otto, he said that loads of bugweed trees were growing outside his property, on the margin between houses, the firebreak and the forest start. He wanted to eliminate them. I suggested we get a bunch of friends together to help him. A bugweed-pulling session was planned and after two hours of so of manual labour and many trees pulled, cut and treated, we were treated to a potjie lunch.

In the following weeks, we did some more bugweed pulling on local sections - sometimes with only two or three of us and other times with more. We setup a Bugweed Warriors whatsapp group to let friends know when we were doing sessions so that they could join us.

Bugweed pulling has turned into a bit of an obsession. 

Otto and I are the ringleaders; we are the most bugweed obsessed. We are very fortunate to have friends who support our project and gladly join in.

At the beginning of this year we crowd-sourced funds from our group and purchased a large Tree Popper. This is a magnificent tool. We can pull bigger trees out by their roots (Prize #1) and work through an area faster and with less effort than to saw-and-treat those we couldn't pull out with back-breaking toil. Tree Popper is our pride and joy. The sound of bugweed roots popping out of the ground is music to our ears.

We get out to pull bugweed probably once every two weeks, even if the session is only 90-minutes. We had a real winner on Sunday morning, spending three hours and making an incredible dent on a bugweed 'grove' in the forest. 

Pile of pulled bugweed - this was only some of what three of us extracted. After pulling them out, we process them by cutting off all of the berries to take out with us and also chopping the trees into smaller pieces to compost faster in a pile.

Before: can't see the woods for the bugweed. After: grove of bugweed cleared
Yes, these areas do require maintenance to pull out any seedlings that emerge. Seedlings are quick and easy; trees take more effort. Otto, Constandt and Ken were out there with me.

Bugweed is fast-growing and a prolific seed producer. There is so much of it that the task can feel overwhelming. I take inspiration from those before-and-after reforestation stories of one person that reforested an area by planting over a million trees in 30 years... Well, this will be the bugweed story here too. 

What we do need are just more and more hands. If every trail runner pulls five seedlings a day from the trails they run on, that will be maintenance taken care of. Our team can then focus on dealing with the large, established, seed-producing trees to prevent the spread.

Bugweed is not only a problem here - it has been in KZN for more than 30 years and I hear that there is loads of it on the highveld. The solution is to have more people aware of it. Aside from cutting down the 'mother' trees, pulling out seedlings is quick and effective in helping to curb more growth - and anyone can do it.

We have a Facebook page and Instagram profile. Join us and get bugweeding where ever you are.